Edmund Gustav Albrecht Husserl was a German philosopher who is generally associated with the modern development of phenomenology (a term which he coined) as he attempted to create out of it a pure, non-empirical science. Husserl’s focus was simply to study the nature of consciousness and how a conscious person could be conscious of their own consciousness. In this, he criticized traditional attempts to understand the use of language through experience, arguing that naturalism was of no value and that insight was the best method to use here.
Through all of this, Husserl’s philosophy was quite abstract and rationalistic — characteristics which would appear to sharply separate him from anything having to do with existentialism. He also advocated a methodology of detachment, standing back and away from human experience in order to better understand it — quite the opposite from the existentialist insistence that one engage as much as possible with human experience in order to understand what meaning can be created.
So what do Husserl and phenomenology have to do with existentialism? The first place to look is in the reasons Husserl had for developing phenomenology originally. According to him, philosophy’s primary goal was to provide humanity with answers to questions about how best to live and grow, but it had diverged from that purpose long ago. This, too, has been a principle concern of existentialism: the lack of a proper place in philosophy for human beings.
The term phenomenology literally means “the science of phenomena” and is based on the premise that reality consists solely of objects and events as they are perceived or understood in human consciousness. Thus, reality is not made up of anything independent of human consciousness. This is where another connection to existentialism can be found: the primacy of the human mind, or consciousness.
Another important convergence can be found in Husserl’s emphasis on how objects present themselves in actual human experiences as opposed to how they are supposed to fit in with some abstract theory that purports to place objects in a grand system. Many of those who followed Husserl’s philosophy were inspired by his call of “Zu den Sachen selbst,” German for “to the things themselves,” which came with his book Logical Investigations.
We can also see where Husserl’s phenomenology diverges from existentialism. For Husserl, the solution to the “crisis” of philosophy was to make it as systematic, as rationalized, and as secure as the modern physical sciences. He was inspired by the great strides made by the sciences in coming to understand the world around us, so he wanted to create a philosophy that would achieve the same for our relationship with the world and with one another.
At the same time, though, he also criticized the natural sciences for their prejudice that nature is purely physical or material in nature, thus ignoring the role of the “spirit” or “soul” when it comes to direct human actions like valuation, judgment, choice, and commitment. Here, Husserl hoped that his philosophy of phenomenology would improve upon what had been done so far in the psychological sciences.
Placing humanity and human concerns at the center of philosophy instead of abstract ideas allowed Husserl to have a profound influence on the early development of existentialist philosophers like Martin Heidegger and Jean Paul Sartre. They often rejected some key aspects of Husserl’s philosophy or modified what they did accept, but the imprint of his ideas can still be seen.
